It is hard to believe that this beautiful weather is coming to an end and snow is upon us soon. This is a good time of the year to reflect on the year’s accomplishments and to determine any things that you want to accomplish yet before 2013 comes to an end. As a company we have accomplished so much this year and have so many things going on. It really is hard to try and fit it all in a monthly newsletter. Here are just a few things that have been done or are being done currently.
Our People
The last week of October we kicked off our A.M.P. (Automotive Mentoring Program) in Lincoln at the Ford store. You can read the blog post about it on aagconnect.com. This is a great example of our techs living out the Cultural Value of Development (helping people reach their full potential by encouraging and coaching character and strengths). Speaking of aagconnect.com, Ryan Stoner just completed a total remodel of the site and it is now accessible through your mobile phone. This is the site that we will be posting company news and updates as well as Top Gun awards every month. If you still have no clue what aagconnect.com is, ask your people resource person in your store to help you get logged in or show you how. Improved communication is one of our main goals and this is one avenue for us to do that more effectively.
Another tool we are working on to improve communication is a text message alert system. This will allow us to notify our people quickly in the event that a company-wide announcement needs to be made. In order to do this, we will create an online signup form for you to input your mobile number. Signup will be voluntary, but encouraged. We promise not to over-text you! You’ll hear more about this soon.
Our Communities
The Lincoln market kicked off an event the last week in October to help raise money for Team Jack. They are donating money for every car sold during a few week timeframe to fight brain cancer. For those who don’t know who Jack is, he was featured on ESPN when he ran for a touchdown at the Huskers’ spring game. Too bad he didn’t play for us against Minnesota since we needed a few more touchdowns at that game. You can read more about this event on aagconnect.com.
Our Mitsubishi building in St. Joe is going up and seems to be on track with completion prior to year-end. The architects are finalizing the details of the Kia and Ford remodel in St. Joe and we hope to send it out to bid here in November with construction starting sometime in December, weather permitting. I’m hoping to have the Convenience Store project under construction starting January as well and in Grand Island we are still trying to work with Ford on the details of the Ford remodel there. Hopefully we can agree on things here shortly.
Our Industry
On a positive note, if you are in the market for a used vehicle now is the time to start considering making a purchase. Auction prices have been falling and we are seeing some great buys out there. Normally this does not last so we are looking at increasing our used vehicle inventories in the different markets. This should impact all departments on a positive note here in the 4th quarter.
On the new vehicle front 2013 has been a decent year with sales volumes. Currently, the market Share numbers for the top 3 manufactures in each of our markets are:
| Lincoln, NE | St. Joseph, MO | Grand Island, NE |
|---|---|---|
| Chevy 14% | Ford 23% | Chevy 16% |
| Ford 13% | Chevy 20% | Ford 15% |
| Honda 13% | Toyota 11% | Toyota 10% |
Obviously our goal is to make Ford #1 in each of our markets and I believe we have the teams to make that happen. We recently changed our CRM tool for all stores in order to help our sales teams become more productive with the customer database and try to improve our overall sales pace for each store. On the fixed ops side we brought in our department leaders for a 1 day conference and challenged them to think about how we can grow each department 30% in the coming months. There were a lot of great ideas shared and I am optimistic that everyone involved will make those numbers a reality.
Our World
Things on this front are a little bit quiet right now. As a company, we believe in the importance of all four of our Impact Areas (People, Community, Industry, World). Having real impact in this fourth area requires a unique level of planning and commitment, and we don’t take that lightly. Because of that, we are taking deliberate steps at a slower pace to make sure the initiatives we create are in line with our Mission and have maximum effect. Look for more communication about these initiatives in 2014.
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